


wretched epistemology

by bee_bro



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reverse of Villains and Heroes, Archivist Jonah Magnus, Bringing About The Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Entities, Canon-Typical Violence, Lonely Avatar Martin Blackwood, M/M, Monster Jonathan Sims, Slaughter Avatar Melanie, The Stranger Avatar Tim Stoker, U get it, and everyone from the og gang are big bad avatars, and so on - Freeform, basically everyone who was big bad avatars is now archive employees, except this time its Jonah, if u just wanna read jonah getting hurt this is TECHNICALLY applicable, the creation of the Archivist, there are gay moments but it's mostly, this is not a fun one!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 07:06:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23847163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_bro/pseuds/bee_bro
Summary: Jonathan Sims has been an avatar of the Eye since the 1800s, has founded an institute, and has slowly turned into something far from human. The Watcher's Crown he desperately needs, and for that to happen, he must create the Archivist. Curious, human Jonah Magnus is perfect for the job.--or, the one where everything is flipped upside down and yet the patterns of the world's undoing are familiar
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonah Magnus, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 17
Kudos: 118





	wretched epistemology

**Author's Note:**

> i spammed this to a friend in text for and prettied it up and now its just another sadder outlet to ship og fratboy elias with sad librarian jonah

The Shimeon Institute is an old establishment and yet not older than its unchanging proprietor. The reputation is that of fool’s academia – ghosts and apparitions, sure – and yet this means no one takes it seriously. Means no one investigates it seriously. Means no one would notice if he who appeared as its sole owner bore the faintest of resemblance to the one who’d begun the Institute in the nineteenth century.

Jonathan Sims is the head of the Shimeon Institute, and has been, since a truly long time ago. Yet as the Eye had taken a hold of him he’d so drastically transformed, physically, mentally, that he’s no longer recognizable- and that's if images of him from 1800 were still available. He’d hollowed out and outgrown his previously subpar height, his eyes are now a putrid green, and people sometimes wonder if he’s wearing contacts. None’s the matter, they cannot stand looking him in the eyes too long anyway. His body is old but it looks of unidentifiable yet unhealthy age. Like he is rotting from the inside but doesn’t bear the usual web of wrinkles one might find on older folk. Jonathan Sims isn’t in control, he’s become so corrupt with the Eye that he’s flying by the seat of his pants passing for human.

He had begun as John Shimeon, a name that stood for _he who hears._ He had become _he who sees_ and he had lost himself in the power, a drowning of ever-consuming proportions, yet not one unwelcome. It is difficult to remain one’s self with no anchor. So now he is Jonathan Sims and he is no longer in control enough to perform the great Crowning. Not fit for the delicacy such a ritual needs. One move of his hand can have enough vertigo to kill hundreds, to damn thousands. He cannot, he Knows, pull such a well-contained and meticulous job. He could, on powerful accident, tear the world apart in ways he doesn’t want.

He needs to find someone else.

Jonathan Sims hires a disposable staff, he can practically taste their detachment, they are all forgettable. Martin helps him find the utmost isolated souls out there. Martin is in his 100s but looks a tired 40 maybe, and maybe a lively 60, and he is one of the most deep-set avatars of the Lonely. Him and Jonathan, they can barely hold a conversation, one in disarray of human form and another so proudly isolated. But they come together with a staff for Jon’s crowning.

It’s Annabelle Cane, she’s cut ties with her family the moment she’d run away when young, and for all her folks know, she’s been dead for years. She’s lied her way into money and an ID and a resume, and yet on a foundation of lies, how much will one be missed if they are to vanish? She will start as a practical researcher.

It's Jane Prentiss, a girl who almost died from something she’d caught in the street, and then left her family so financially devastated from treatment that they couldn’t pay for their own care when _they_ were the ones deteriorating. She will work in filing.

It’s Jared Hopworth, orphaned by a mangling car crash from which his family had come away in twisted pieces. Jon finds him amusing, as the man had somehow applied for the job in – what he has to admit – is a glorified library. And with Jared, a lot of times, it feels like he has muscle for brain. He’s hellbent on bodybuilding but has a fascination with books, it will seem, and Jon isn’t too adverse. It helps to have some rather clueless people on the team, like oil for the kegs of his plan. He will start in storage.

It’s Manuela Dominguez, another one to break loose of her family’s ideals and get picked up by a cult she’d barely escaped, no positive light in her life, only avoiding electricity bills by keeping her apartment dark. She may not trust easy but Jon does not need trust, he needs pawns. She will be in research too.

It’s Elias Bouchard, someone on a downwards trajectory of debt, lying lying lying to get by and who is hollowed of all emotion but reflexive humor, sharp, but Jon knows he will not care- he has lost the ability to. He will be head assistant. It’s Agnes Montague, found in the middle of the woods as a babe, no parent in sight. It’s Mike Crew, parents taken by disease and he’s someone dodging from allegations of multiple kidnappings. It’s people to populate the archives for the upcoming re-kindling of the world.

He Knows the staff have affinities, that they might fall to entities as time goes on. It is all well. Annabelle looks like the Web the moment she walks in and tries to smooth-talk an uncaring Jon into hiring her. Jane sanitizes her hands after everything she touches. It is an old fear of hers. Sickness. Jared finds value in his perfect body. Elias hasn’t spoken any truth in so long he’s lost himself, and Jon thinks it will be so fun to have two possible Web avatars in one building: Annabelle and Elias dishing it out.... But none the matter. He needs someone to be the crown jewel to his grand parade. The bearer of not one Entity’s burden but every. The Archivist.

Jonah Magnus is a man so painfully addicted to the bystander's effect it's his only hobby. He goes to watch eating competitions and boxing and dog fights and car races, waiting for something to go terribly wrong, so he can stand from the safety of the audience and simply watch pain unfold to replace the intended entertainment. He no longer has family he speaks with and sports a full head of prematurely grey hair. He watched the murder of his parents as a kid and now he wants to _watch watch watch._ But he lives on the other side of the country and is content wasting away his inherited wealth.

And Jon doesn't do too well contacting other avatars but it so happens that he's existed for rather long and everyone's owing him one thing or another these days. And so he gets to Basira: a prolific avatar of the Web. She’s been left with a lot of her humanity and can pass rather alright, except he knows she's a hollow shell, carrying thousands of spiders within.

Basira gets Jonah to apply for the Shimeon Institute.

It’s all uphill from there.

Jon hides in his office so he doesn't have to keep it together physically for longer than thirty minute intervals, watches the institute and watches Jonah, watches Jonah begin to read, begin to fall in love with feeling the pain of tragedies he will not, can not, partake in. He begins holing up in his office when statements and research start tasting better than talking to his coworkers. Elias brings him tea like clockwork, because he's got it in his head that that's a Polite thing to do for your boss. And since he can’t get access to bring tea to Jon, Jonah will do as the next of kin.

And things go as they may. As Jon will have them.

The staff forms bonds, seeds lesions into them, still friendly and human, then forms new bonds, goes out for movie nights. You need to build something up before you can methodically break it down. And so Jonathan Sims calls up on his associates to begin the marking of Jonah Magnus. First, it shall be something neutral for all his treasured employees, so all can look into the face of an Entity without one being pre-disposed to join. Jon calls on one of the Stranger’s more coherent avatars.

Tim Stoker, Timothy Stalker, Tim, just plain old Tim who you definitely know _(but do you?)_ begins his mortaring of the Institute. Small things. Pictures you saved appearing under names you don’t remember typing in. Social media acting up, pictures taken come out blurry, phone book records don’t make sense. Elias is bothered the most: he doesn’t like uncertainty. He hasn’t dabbled in drugs outside of weed but tells Manuela once that he feels he’s having a very prolonged, very slowed down acid trip. She hides behind dark sunglasses and doesn’t admit to much. So Elias finally goes to Jonah after going to sleep one night and somehow only waking up eight days later, plagued by a dream where everything was wrong and different and he was ultimately not himself but someone else. A coma of sorts, right, Jonah? He doesn’t want to go back to his bed yet. Jonah lets him stay at the archives.

And then Tim finally unleashes a better show unto the Institute when everyone is very much at work, a small, contained kind of Unknowing. The chaos of the world being removed from him upsets Jonah dearly, hurts him, and Jonathan Sims knows that this will make him all the more reliant on knowledge, as he’ll never want to _not know_ anything ever in his life. Agnes stops Tim’s ministrations by, rather unpleasantly on Jon’s behalf, somehow exploding the boiler room.

Tim pulls away and asks Jon if he may leave. Jon doesn’t like looking at him and at what he’s choosing to be as of the moment, and tells Tim he can go. Jonah Magnus is left with strange, blotchy pattern scars from Tim's Unknowing that sometimes look like faces in the wrong light. The skin-born chronicling of Jonah’s pain will go well.

Sims brings in Daisy and the Hunt and her ‘animals’ that terrorize the institute. Things that you could never name but ones you can tell are well-endowed to find you and hurt you. Everyone is on edge. Jon can start trusting the staff to fall to their respective gods of fear, can trust them to begin having just as much a play in Jonah’s Becoming as more well-established avatars. Time passes. Jonah has bite mark scars from carnivore fangs. Jonah has stitches where Jared had given him an open broken bone in a fit of argumentative rage, raised skin where Jane had tried to disinfect him with bleach in his sleep, syringe marks where Annabelle had drugged him for her own reasons.

Now Jon needs to instill the Buried, the Dark, the Desolation, the End, the Lonely, the Spiral, the Slaughter, the Vast.... It can be done.

The decade is still young.

Jon is endless.

Jon is not one body in an office, Jon is simple Knowledge and sometimes has to step down from his universality into the office shoes of what used to be Jonathan Sims and John Shimeon and other names. It is not easy. It is not easy reducing all of his Being into one small point, with two main eyes and one mouth and two hands. With bones and organs, no matter how contorted. Attempting to fit an ocean within a spoon. He must bring the Crown about before the world becomes too constricting to contain his ever-strengthening form.

Jonah is not sleeping much more and it's all so wonderful: it means his nights are longer and darker. Jonah walks from the Institute to his new apartment not too far off but just far enough to make his evening strolls home all the more horrible. And he shouldn’t have upset Manuela. She’d fallen to the Dark eagerly. She’d fallen into hatred for Jonah even faster. He’s burning his bridges as if by Desolation’s hand, but Jonathan Sims can see the bond with the Eye strengthen every time Jonah Magnus glances behind himself on the street to check if he’s being followed. Watched.

Jon can’t see too well in the Dark. And can't know what it is that Manuela does, or what it is that she sends after Jonah. Or what she becomes when the sun falls. But Jonah starts staying later nights at the archives and insists for all the lights to stay on. Jon doesn’t object. Because if all the lights are on all the time there is, at one point, bound to be a short-circuiting. An electric fire.

It takes almost a month. He doesn’t need an avatar for this, nor does Agnes play too much a role. Martin is enough, really, he's had his fun with country-scale forest fires before the Lonely had really settled into his bones for good. So he knows his way around arson. ‘Accidental’ one too. But Jon wouldn’t let his archives _really_ burn. So Martin stands in Jon's office, hands in his pockets, tall and big and oh so grey, and laughs but its soundless static.

Jon indulges in the laugh too and it's like listening to a whole atrium full of people humming. Martin keeps his fog cold and preventive of fire around the papers that are truly important, and so the only things that burn are the ones Jon can afford to lose to gain Jonah Magnus’ despair.

And Jonah panics, and tries to save statements he’s convinced aren’t backed up and made copies of and are therefore, not something he can lose: and Jon revels in this. Jonah is putting his knowledge before his life and that's exactly what's needed. He’s alone in the office, rushing as the fire jumps from curtains to furniture to desktops. Jonah grabs all he thinks he needs and dashes out of his office and the doorknob is so hot that when he gets out, it is mis-shaped to model his fingers. Jonah's hand is ultimately blistering without treatment for weeks.

And those weeks, Jonah spends in the Lonely.

Because the moment he steps out of his office, he steps into mist. Jonah wonders the empty archives where all the door labels have been removed and there is no sign anyone has ever worked there, no sign of fire too. He finds his desk and there’s a nameplate on it but it’s empty for all but:

_Forgotten._

Jonah has never been a huge fan of social interaction but as he circles the Institute for what feels like weeks, he clutches his salvaged documents and cradles his burned palm and slowly loses the ability to feel for his own misfortune. Martin sits in Jon’s office, bearded chin resting in his calloused palm, humming an old sea shanty and enjoying the tremendous, helpless isolation Jonah suffers.

Jonah is sallow and pale and his feet drag at the end of it, and it is so, so quiet.

And then Jonah sees a door he does not recognize. It is so bright in this grey world that his eyes sting. Jonah opens it because what else is there to do?

Helen saves Jonah Magnus.

Jon would mind if he had the space for opinions. Helen saves Jonah Magnus but she's always been bad with gauging the fragility of humans. Jonah returns to the real world with bleeding punctures in his shoulder where sharp fingers had stabbed deep. He sees only the swirling mess of a dimension with no correct direction and collapses onto the staff room carpeted floor, filthy and worn down to the very bones. Elias calls the ambulance.

He rides with Jonah to the hospital and looks at him weird for the whole process, like he's trying to understand what happened just through boring his eyes into right above Jonah’s head. And when Jonah stubbornly rasps ‘what?’, Elias, of course, lies. Pats the unburned hand that’s lying limply on the gurney and says that Jonah’s just too goddamn pretty. Elias knows the hospital layout well.

Now Jon needs the Buried, the End, the Slaughter, the Vast.... and so when Jonah's healed up and less of a dehydrated skeleton, Jonathan Sims grants Mike Crew some Knowledge. That Jonah couldn’t help it and snooped right into Mike’s past. That he knows about the kidnappings. Mike thinks he’s still too young to lose anything and he’s been flying on paranoia for years – that’s bound to weather one. And so while Jonah goes back to reading statements and having rather interesting dreams (that is, when he sleeps), Mike Crew plans on how to best get rid of someone endangering his innocence.

He pushes Jonah off the roof. Jonah goes up there to smoke now. Well, did. Not anymore. Jonah falls for what feels like hours. It is a five story building, the Institute. Jonah survives. Jonah survives the fall in uncontained agony and once again Elias follows him to the hospital. You can’t bring your boss tea if he’s dead and if Elias isn’t bringing someone tea and being polite, he’ll have to face the resolute emptiness within himself and realize he can’t _really_ care about interacting, can he?

Elias jokes that Jonah’s too young to die, but says it with such conviction it’s almost reassuring.

Jon gives his Archivist a few months to recover. It’s not necessary as the bones knit themselves together much faster than both Jonah himself and the doctors expect. Yet, Jonah is beginning to Know things and Knows there is reason behind this. In those months of rather peaceful lack of adverse guests in the archives, Jonah drowns in research of the Entities. Elias brings him tea. They talk because Jonah _could_ technically talk at a wall but a wall doesn’t provide him with biscuits and with understanding nods. Mike Crew is put away but he’s served his purpose and Jon doesn’t care much beyond that. Same with Agnes, as Jonah’s marked with the Desolation’s handshake without her involvement. Manuela fades off on her own activities. Jared too. The archives are growing scarcer.

Now Jonah runs with scars where his ribs had broken skin from the fall, where his spine had to be put back together. He is a walking medical miracle. Jon is not done with him.

Jonah’s apartment by then does not feel safe and Elias notices that Jonah’s been sleeping at the institute those rare instances of shut-eye. He somehow invites Jonah to stay with him but it's all out of some kind of conviction that, maybe, if he can love someone, he can dig himself out of the shit's he’s digging himself into all the time. That maybe his loyalty to Jonah’s side will bring him the emotion he so dearly lacks. It’s a maybe.

Jonah’s starting to understand the fears. Jon sends in something that had at one point been Melanie King. The Slaughter is wonderful, he's always hated it and knows Jonah will just as much. The Slaughter is in a lot of ways, tied to unpredictability. Who will Melanie hurt next? Hard to tell, she wields so many weapons. The Eye does not like it but he's old enemies with Melanie and she’s happy to feed. The staff, or what’s left of it, is at the institute when it happens and Elias stands in front of Jonah, arms spread to keep Jonah safe, somehow unafraid. And Jonathan Sims knows that simply won't do.

And so Melanie is given the Knowledge by Jon’s hand to shoot Elias, kill him, don’t bother.

She does, and when Elias falls away, Jon knows that _this_ moment of watching Elias crumble will be _much_ more marking for Jonah than getting actually, personally shot himself could ever be. His eyes are glued to poor, unmoving, dumb, brave Elias, and he does not care if Melanie shoots him. Melanie does but it's _just_ off, just off on purpose, and she blows off Jonah’s right ear.

Jonah falls to his knees in both pain and to chase Elias but he ultimately, ultimately, is far along enough in his transitionary Becoming, to suddenly _Know_ how to take her down. Jonah lunges at the figure of many pains with no eyes, no eyes, for War is blind, and tears at her bagpipes. Their sound bends and grinds and finally comes to a stop and Melanie is gone. Everyone who’s left is rushed, once more, to the hospital- and somehow, Elias survives. Jonah weeps and the thing that is Jonathan Sims _knows_ it’s for himself and for what he's becoming and that he's, at the end of each dreadful day, not too against the change. Jonah’s ear is unsavable but he's up on his feet earlier than the rest and sits by Elias' bed.

Now it’s the Buried and the End left.

The former will be easy to execute, the latter not so much. The more time passes before Jon can sink his hands into the world and mold it to fit his liking and comfort, the worse he feels. It is oh so difficult to exist under the laws of logical form.

Jonah doesn’t have too much to recover from. It’s only an ear. Jonah has to briefly go back to his own place. And wouldn’t it be a shame if he hadn’t been alerted about the apartment getting vacated and put up for demolition? And wouldn’t it be great if Jonah was by fortunate accident in it when the process would begin?

Jonah is trapped under the rubble for a long time.

Jonathan Sims once more employs Basira’s assistance in making the demolition team all the more disjointed, put all the more time between the building’s crumble and the process of clean-up. Jonah cannot shout, there is no air for him down there. What happy coincidence that he no longer needs to breathe to stay lucid. And so Jonah lies in the oppressive dark and once more fears death. But _no._ It’s not enough to mark him as the End. The damned End, Jon sits in his office. Jonah’s been afraid of death plenty times but not enough to mark, to leave the lasting effect he needs.

And so Jonah lies there, terrified, and ultimately promises himself that when he makes it out of this one, he’ll follow through with things he’s been avoiding. They’re mostly Elias-related and it’s a pleasant distraction. That and possibly killing Jonathan Sims. He waits and panics and thinks.

In the meantime, Elias is finally allowed to get back on his feet and quickly realizes the absence of Jonah from anywhere and everywhere- and that his old building happens to be a pile of rubble. And when Jonah’s discovered and pulled up from the building's remains, Elias is called in as the emergency contact. And he is there as fast as he can travel and he kisses Jonah.

And Jonathan Sims no longer has to worry about Jonah’s marking by the End.

As Elias has slowly but surely become its loyal avatar.

Jon’s wondered but never had direct confirmation. He’d pinned Elias as the Web’s moppet but between his utterly hollow emotional framework and the way he’d been able to look at Jonah in the ambulance and tell him with conviction it wasn’t his time… Or his utter lack of fear before the great Slaughter. Or, really, his survival of some rather interestingly fatal bullet wound. And as he cradles Jonah and kisses him, the End’s mark is sealed.

And Jonah is complete.

But after Elias kisses him, he whispers, "Lets vanish, I know how to make everyone stop looking for a body, how to disappear." And they do. And Jon gives them a month to rest up. They’re in a cute little apartment and Martin joins Jon in the office to laugh about it in their strange yet unifying ways, that an avatar of the End is now in possession of rather endearing feelings and that an avatar of the Eye is somehow unaware of the danger they’re in.

And then Jon sends the letter that will entrap Jonah and from Jonah’s mouth will come the words that damn the world. Elias leaves for a walk and Jonah finally opens the letter, it starts like an unrelated statement and the moment the farce drops and Jon’s voice spills from Jonah’s lips, he is doomed. Jon talks about his plans and his existence and his ways and how Elias was a sure surprise but not an unpleasant one. About how as time'd gone by it'd gotten harder and harder for Jon to live in the human world, harder to keep his body looking normal - and yes that's why he wears v-necks, there are more eyes than you'd ever see, and about how with every eye he can now gaze from, he’s grown more powerful, and how Jonah will have to bring about a world where Jon can exist and the entities can exist too.

After all, Jon will be doing every one of the avatars a huge favor with this gig of his...

But oh how naive it is _\- and Elias comes home at this point and sees Jonah crouching on the kitchen floor, crippled with pain, reading –_ to think that an apocalypse can be brought upon a world so large with words only. Language is not universal and words are fickle construct of tradition. Hence, just a little more is required. Just a little sacrifice.

In an apocalypse of fear landscapes there will no longer be a death that matters.

And how convenient… That there is an avatar of Death, of the End, so close underhand, isn’t that so, Jonah? _Elias crouches by Jonah and Jonah is reading reading reading and cannot tell Elias to get away, get away to where it is safe from him._

And he is still reading when he digs Elias' eyes out with his fingers, Jon’s words spilling from his mouth.

And the moment Elias Bouchard completely loses his vision the world _GAINS_ its own.

The sky opens its eyes and Jonah looks up into the dome of it from the kitchen floor, through the window, and can finally drop the paper that quickly saturates with blood on the tiles. Elias is lying, clutching his face , but Jon’s promise doesn't break: _in an apocalypse of fear landscapes there will no longer be a death that matters._ Elias can not die.

But he can sure feel pain.

And whatever was once John Shimeon can breathe without the constriction of humanity, can unfurl and encompass the world in pleasant entirety.

**Author's Note:**

> its not angst if its not worse than canon am i right boys?  
> well, hope you.... enjoyed the read as much as that's possible on poor jonah's behalf~ comments are food for the soul of the dumbass writer and i love all of you bastardeys
> 
> art for this can now be found on my [Tumblr](https://mymuffyincat.tumblr.com/post/618788729488818176/22ratonthestreeet-some-admittedly-rushed-art)! 


End file.
